Celine’s writing playfully partakes of the aesthetic of the corpse. Bodies eroding, decaying, at the cusp of death, and a multiplicity of other images flood the reader’s imagination; those fortunate enough to subsist are witnesses to the decay that will soon corrupt and overwhelm them.

Celine donned numerous masks: anonymous writer, salacious womaniser, outspoken racialist, critic of French chauvinism, socialist, ardent pacifist, conspiracy-monger, League of Nations surgeon, and proto-existentialist – perhaps his vagrancy should take first place?